Frostheim, co-creator of Warcraft Hunters Union (and all that that site has done for us hunters), progenitor of WoW Hunters Hall, long-time Scattered Shots (WoW Insider) columnist, long-time member (and poet laureate) of the Hunting Party Podcast, writer of several amazing odes to hunters, staunch defender of facts and math and balance, advocate for cool new stuff for hunters, recoverer of his own cloak, and generally fun and awesome guy, announced last Saturday on the Hunting Party Podcast – and later that day on WHU – that he is retiring.

Given his recent stretches of absence from the WHU and the HPP, to say that I didn’t see this coming would be incorrect. And he is not quitting the game, but is shutting down his personal commitments to his blogging / podcasting activities in order to devote his time to other ventures. He’s also apparently going to put away his white-quality weapons and lessen the amount of time he spends shooting at target dummies as if they’re trying to invade his city, and actually devote more of his WoW time to playing the game! This is a good thing.

Personally, though – and I know I speak for untold numbers of players out there – I Will Miss You, Frost.

I’m A Hunter

I wasn’t always a hunter. But one of my earliest toons was a hunter back when I started playing shortly after the release of Burning Crusade, although since I was a terrible player (and that’s all the info anyone needs) back then, I failed to get him to level 70.

During the spring of 2010, when the Lich King was dead and we were in the midst of the longest stretch of meaningful-content-less boredom in the history of the game, I started listening to the Hunting Party Podcast. I forget how it happened; the best I can remember is that, as a reader of WoW Insider, I liked Frostheim’s Scattered Shots posts more than just about anything else on the site.

(I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was probably ready for a change at that point… but anyway, to continue…)

Of course, the header on each of his posts mentioned that he was from Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast, and so I checked them out. And let me say, when someone charismatic like Frostheim is available to be both read and listened to, it can be a powerful combination. I wasn’t much of a podcast-listener in those days – my only constant at the time was the WoW Insider Show, which I haven’t listened to in almost a year now, and I had tried out several others that either didn’t grab me or didn’t stick around. So when I found Darkbrew, Euripides, and Frostheim, I was hooked. I downloaded and listened to every single episode that was available on iTunes, and they were my companions that summer and fall as we inched our way toward the launch of Cataclysm.

Meanwhile, I started a few hunters. Mushan stuck, and the rest is history (which I’ve laid out in previous posts). Playing the hunter that summer and fall, leveling the hunter, doing dungeons on the hunter, was every bit as fun as I had imagined it would be while listening to the HPP. As a player who now had some general skill, I didn’t have any of the problems I had had in 2008 with my long-deleted original. I was topping meters, learning to use my utility abilities, enjoying playing the movement/Auto Shot game, and seriously thinking about making Mushan my main. Which eventually happened.

I was “Ana” back in the day, but now I’m “Mushan,” and that is indescribably largely due to the influence of one Frostheim.

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Things lately have been quieter on the Mushan/HPP front. I often work on Saturdays, so I don’t get to listen in live when the show is recorded anymore. And the shows have often taken weeks to come out on iTunes, and so over the past several months I’ve only listened a handful of times, and I expect that to continue.

But I’ve always enjoyed listening to Frostheim, and I’m going to miss that. He has given so much to the hunter community at this point that it’s almost a cliche to say so, but I don’t care. Why?

Because without Frostheim, it’s almost certain that there would be no Mushan. And that’s of some importance, at least to me. He literally rejuvenated my WoW experience by unknowingly reintroducing me to the hunter class. He changed the game for me. Without Frostheim, I might not have switched over to a hunter. Without Frostheim, I might not even be playing the game anymore. At the very least, without Frostheim, this blog would certainly not exist in this form.

The first paragraph of this post probably makes me sound like a bit of a fan-boy. Am I a fan-boy of Frostheim? Hell yes! I think my previous paragraph does a pretty good job explaining why.

And so, to Frostheim, Thank You for all you’ve done for hunters. You’ve been a gift to us these past several years, and I’ll never forget it. I’ll be following whatever you do in the future – stay in touch!

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As of today (Friday, August 23), we’re four weeks and change from the release of Mists of Pandaria. While this blog has been kind of dead for the majority of the summer, I am still very excited about the expansion – particularly excited for the thought of reuniting with my raiding friends as we sink our teeth into the first tier of raids that will come along with it.

I haven’t been writing much about hunters this summer. Since my iMac went down for the count on June 26th or so, I haven’t been playing Mushan much at all. I have, however, finally gotten my new mage (mentioned in previous posts) up to 85 (as of the middle of last week) and close to max level for both Jewelcrafting and Tailoring. so I am good to go with respect to leveling those professions once MoP drops.

However, my hunter, despite the lack of attention, is still my great love, and my greatest interest in the game, come Pandaria.

As such, I must pass along, without further ado, a must-see site if you are looking for hunter info for patch 5.0.4 (August 28 pre-xpac patch) and MoP (9/25):

WoW Hunters Hall (Tabana = curator; follow her!!) has been amazing over the life of this pre-expansion period, and her collection and linking activities have really increased quite rapidly over the past couple of weeks. A lot of bloggers and theorycrafters have been putting a great deal of time into testing out hunter specs, glyphs, new abilities, gear, and stats, as well as raiding and pvping. There is a wealth of information on WHH, and Tabana has been working very hard to bring all of that and even more discussion to your eyes and mine.

And I haven’t even mentioned the work Tabana has put in when it comes to gear lists and general MoP hunter guides. She has a living, quickly-updated set of guides available, and as new info comes out that pertains to hunters, she is on it immediately, culling and presenting it to you and me and thousands of other lucky players.

She also has a great list of hunter resources, including blogs, hunter Youtube channels, podcasts, forums, theorycrafting resources, tools, and other references for just about anything you need. It’s really the mandatory hunter portal for serious hunters in World of Warcraft.

I’ve definitely benefited from following WHH. So add the site to your RSS, follow it on Twitter, do whatever it takes to make WHH a constant part of your WoW-related reading if you’re a hunter. I’ve personally been salivating over the gear list, glyph info, updates on buffs and nerfs and changes, and the thoughts of my fellow hunters as we blog and play our way into MoP and beyond.

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(new subject)

I’ve been trying to decide how I’m going to replace my iMac’s corpse, and I’m leaning toward building my own PC. I’m going to hazard a guess that this will (financially) become reality around Sept. 15th, at which point I will hopefully be re-downloading all 23GB of the stinkin’ game and getting things set up. Once I’ve accomplished that, I will absolutely be playing my hunter more, and will be able to include screenshots and what-have-you in my posts again, and all that good stuff.

I have plenty of writing material on my mind, and will be playing my hunter hard-core – and he will be the first toon that I level through MoP, of course. In addition, I’m also excited about leveling my warrior and druid tanks, and I may post about this in the coming weeks. Active mitigation is an idea that fascinates me – as do the reactions of those players who feel negatively about it.

At some point, I will think about a monk. I’d love to level a Brewmaster, but I’m afraid that doing so will make me forget about my warrior. Is that weird? It probably is. But it is what it is…

Anyway, go visit WoW Hunters Hall today. You won’t regret it!

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Thanks for reading this post by Mushan at Mushan, Etc. Comments are welcome!

While we know that Warchief Garrosh Hellscream is set to be – at the very least – stripped of his title in the Mists of Pandaria expansion, he is still very much in charge and involved in what goes on in the current game. And how do we know this?

He has his own blog, where he tells tales of his heroic exploits, shares original poetry as “epic verse,” posts transcripts of the ridiculous conversations he finds himself involved in, answers mail, and updates us on his experiences in the MMO game he plays, Earth Online.

The Warchief’s Command Board is, hands down, the funniest blog in my reader. For proof, click the link in the last sentence and spend 15 minutes reading through his last several posts. For immediate proof, click this story from March 29th, entitled Of Wyverns And Pinecones, which prompted Big Bear Butt to declare Garrosh Hellscream “writer of my favorite humor post of the year 2012.”

Hellscream has his own larger-than-life personality, and it really comes through in his writing. As an orc, and a warchief, he is blunt and pulls no punches. This does mean that his language isn’t usually safe for children – or those with tender ears – but his posts are always humorous and often hilarious.

I have to say that reading his blog over the past several months has caused my feelings for the Warchief to warm considerably, and apparently many others feel this way too. Garrosh will eventually be unseated, but in the meantime, he will likely continue to entertain his readers for many months to come.

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